


Mathematical Principles in Translation

by fannishliss



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gift Giving, Languages, M/M, Math and Science Metaphors, Winter Companions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor finds a beautiful book and figures out where it came from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mathematical Principles in Translation

**Title:** Mathematical Principles in Translation  
**Author:** fannishliss  
**Prompt:** #2 - sketching, mathematics, Philosophae Naturalis Principia, Fortieth Epoch Arabic  
This was written for the 2015 Winter Companions prompt fest on LJ. Thanks to the mods for the very fun prompts!  
**Rating:** General Audiences  
**Pairing:** Doctor/Jack  
**Spoilers/warnings:** none  
With thanks to my beloved beta, The Claw.

===

The Doctor had found a bookshop.

Across the aeons, knowledge had been preserved in infinite media: pressed into clay or wax; painted onto stone or skin or papyrus; printed onto pulp; pulsed in binaries onto magnetic tape, into mylar and silicon, in patterns of electrons. Knowledge had been memorized by sages; taught in schools; passed along through songs, drumbeats, and knotted string, encoded into chemical formulae, stored in stoppered bottles and released in gaseous clouds like djinn.

A library was something comprehensive, systematic, attempting the universal. A bookshop, though, was magic — relying on serendipity to guide a questing mind and eye and hand to bring the perfect byte to the brain of the seeker.

The Doctor, when he saw a bookshop, darted in, sharp eyes taking in every detail. In a flash he understood fonts on spines, colors and patterns on covers. He gathered in a few double heartbeats the eras, languages, formats, and genres the bookshop encompassed.

He delved deep, past the romances, classics, mysteries and kidlit, past even the fairy sagas and science yarns, to math and the sciences. There in the very back of the store, on the dustiest, highest, most out of the way shelf, on the end, was a handwritten book.

The spine alone was a work of art. The endless looping swirls of Fortieth Epoch Arabic delineated the title after a moment’s unravelling. Like Ariadne following her clue through the labyrinth, the Doctor’s mind unwound the title, _Mathematic Principles of Natural Philosophy_ : Newton’s classic work, the moment when human understanding of the universe, the heated theories of forces of mass and energy and gravity, were first codified into the cool equations of mathematics.

The Doctor carefully turned the heavy pages, luxuriating in the feel of the archival rag. Every spread was a work of art, sketching Newton’s immortal work into a calligraphic design of extraordinary complexity. The work must have taken years — to translate the work into basic Arabic was only the beginning. To envision each chapter as a calligraphic design — illustrative of the principle each described — and then to execute those designs — would have taken immeasurably longer. The three books of Newton’s work were here in toto, not in the least abridged, but illuminated by each design. The Doctor stared down at images that knotted and dwindled into fractals that almost seemed to shimmer and undulate of their own accord.

How had he found this book? How had he come to lay hands upon it? It was as though the book were a gift from the universe, intended for him personally.

He flipped again to the title page. No editorial information was provided: no translator’s name; unnamed the brilliant artist who had devoted a lifetime to completing such a masterpiece. No publishing house, no year, no date, not even a place of publication. Only a translation of the title page from Newton’s original, interpreted in flowing Arabic, every line a rendition of Newton’s understanding of reality.

The Doctor purchased the book, of course; the psychic paper the ultimate bureau de change as it connected the Doctor’s accounts (minded for him across the eras by the Tardis) with the local currency. The Doctor transferred a sum that made the shopkeeper blink and drop its mouthparts in slack amazement. He was gone before the shopkeeper had finished saying it knew nothing of the author and had dug the book out of the bottom of an abandoned trunk consigned from an old building’s storage. In the Doctor’s wake, the shopkeeper turned the sign on the door and went on holiday early.

The Doctor hurried his book to the Tardis, locked the doors, slipped into the vortex, left her to watch over them both, and threw himself onto her library’s comfiest sofa.

There was a mystery here.

The book was too perfect. The mind that had translated the text was passionate compared to the cold formality of math, but nonetheless had sacrificed decades translating the equations into gorgeous artworks. The science of mathematics was elevated in the work to the status of religion, but the artist wasn’t a believer. The artist stood somehow aloof, standing apart from the subject matter just enough to render a cool and fair translation — sketching the math into the art, but equally imbricating the art with the math.

The Doctor, in his travels, had seen such work a few times before: in the science temples of Archia Prime, where subatomic, chemical, physical, and biological knowledge was encoded into light refracted by huge mosaics of glittering cut glass; in the caverns of Phellucida, where living crystals arranged themselves into scientific formulae; in the astronomical symphonies of High Brahminzartoveen culture; but never had he seen one artist, working in isolation, produce such a singleminded opus.

The Tardis spun her way through the vortex as the Doctor perused the spectacular volume. Every moment he gazed upon it, some new wonder unfolded in his mind. The artist yearned to convey the joy of the math; the sublime simplicity; the ache of uncertainty where the loose ends of Newtonian physics did not quite meet. This was a mind that had seen the fabric of the universe folded. The Doctor could almost imagine that the translator had somehow slipped beyond Newtonian dimensions almost to the Vortex itself— on some pages there was a hint of the spiraling chord that wove the universe and time into (w)holes such as the Doctor himself navigated.

This book was almost worthy of a Time Lord.

But no Time Lord would deign to copy the work of an Earthling. No Time Lord would find the equations of a seventeenth-century British natural philosopher anything more special than the kindergarten scribblings of a chuck fresh off the loom.

This was human work. But such an exquisite, unusual human! Whose mind could comprehend, whose heart could beat with such fervor, who would give so many years to such an undertaking?

The Doctor felt his hearts quiver. His nerveless hands laid the precious old book aside.

This was not a book.

It was a love letter.

And how long, how many epochs had passed since the penning?

The Doctor closed his eyes as grief and regret sent a physical pain that shot from the top of his head down his throat to settle just behind his improbable navel.

The ache lurched and tore at him, alarming the Tardis. She scanned him, drew back, and tutted like his favorite tutor (a furry robot with a universal library tap and a penchant for poetry).

She showed him where and when the book had been penned. As soon as she placed the coordinates in his mind, his eidetic memory pieced together how those coordinates had been woven into the decorative borders of every single page.

The Tardis did him the favor of entering those coordinates into her nav systems.

All he had to do was pull the lever, power down the throttle, and unlock the doors.

The grinding noise and the familiar thump left him almost paralyzed. Would he really be welcome, after so long?

Would the artist really be so glad to see him?

Explosive spirals sang in his mind, wheeling like the panoply of galaxies from between the pages of the closed and dusty book. Every symphony, tome and tablet, code and pulse sang out, with music like messenger angels:

_He called. Now come._

The Doctor opened the door and walked out. His Tardis had parked herself unobtrusively in the corner of a luscious courtyard. A trickling fountain sparkled in diffuse sunlight under an arbor of vines. Cool tiles, verdant plants, moisture in the air, a slight breeze, the vague hint of music or maybe distant chimes. This was no hermit’s hole. This was paradise.

Someone was coming. The Tardis had slipped in, but someone had noticed her arrival.

Someone entered the courtyard carrying a tray, laden with a teapot, glasses, and several dishes of sweets. Not far from the Tardis was a cushioned bench and a low table, where the bearer deposited the tray.

The Doctor held his breath. The man threw back his hood.  
  
“Jack,” the Doctor breathed. He stepped forward, reached out, took Jack’s hands almost without volition.

“Took you long enough,” Jack said, but his eyes were a merciful melange of old sorrow, constant benediction, and blossoming hope.

“Jack, the book— it’s incredible.”

“I made it for you,” Jack said.

“How long did it take?” the Doctor asked.

“Not long,” Jack said, “in the grand scheme of things.”

“I came as soon as I found it,” the Doctor said. “I wish I’d come sooner.”

“Well — you do have a time machine,” Jack said.

The Doctor gazed hopelessly at Jack, chagrined. “I’m a fool,” he said, embarrassed by the profligacy of Jack’s offering.

“Aren’t we both?” Jack laughed. He’d shucked his bitterness and fatigue. He was somehow young again.

“Jack,” the Doctor said, leaning forward, wanting nothing more than to feel his old friend’s arms around him.

And so Jack held him close, and fed him sweets of every kind, and showed him the wonders of an afternoon, an evening, a night and a morning, and millennia of days thereafter.


End file.
